Ring of Steel

by Alexander Watson

  The rituals choreographed around the nail figures celebrated and reinforced a conservative vision of a united but hierarchical society. City mayors and senior provincial officials usually hosted unveiling ceremonies, while local dignitaries, and in larger cities regional royalty, were always first with the hammer. The nails were not all alike: the hoi polloi generally had the satisfaction of armouring the figure with an iron nail for as little as 50 pfennigs or one mark. Wealthier citizens showed off their status and patriotism by buying silver-coloured nails for two or five marks. For elites, the nails were golden and cost 50 or 100 marks. The ceremonies affirmed communities’ ties both with the nation and the front: Wiesbaden’s mayor, for example, addressed the audience at the opening of his city’s 4.2-metre-high ‘Iron Siegfried’ on 26 September 1915 as ‘German women and men!’ ‘Every nail in the armour of Siegfried,’ he told the gathered citizens, ‘is . . . a greeting to the lonely graves of our heroes in the land of the enemy and a means of assuaging the distress of their wives, their fathers and mothers.’62 At the centre of the ceremonies, however, remained the local community itself. Craft and professional associations, religious groups, women’s organizations and hobbyists expressed their unity and identification with municipality and nation by taking part or even holding their own ceremonies.63

  Youth were also mobilized to pay homage at these altars of communal solidarity. In Wiesbaden, a city of 109,000 people, 12,000 children were marched down to Siegfried in October 1915, where they listened to the municipal school inspector hold forth on the German virtues of truth and loyalty and the bond between the people and the Kaiser. Not only was a golden nail bought on behalf of all the children, but donations ensured that each child, however poor, had the chance to bang his or her own iron nail into the statue.64 Of course, these minors had no choice but to attend. The crowds that thronged around these statues in the weeks and months after their unveiling, and the large sums of money that were collected testify, however, that they did satisfy a psychological need. Nailing allowed civilians partially to repay the debt that many felt was owed to the front by demonstrating love for the relatives of fallen soldiers. It enabled them to feel they could contribute, at least symbolically, to ‘steeling’ their society against shared adversity. The spread of metal ‘armour’ across the wooden surfaces of the statues also provided reassuring evidence of a wider unity and readiness to sacrifice, and could be understood as a metaphor for communal resilience. There is every reason to conclude that the nail figures were highly successful in strengthening popular readiness to endure, in raising community solidarity and in further binding local societies to the German national war effort.65

  The popularity of nail figures was not confined to the German-speaking world. Austrian Poles also adopted the new custom enthusiastically. Some seventy-seven towns in Galicia set up a nail monument, although, as these communities were on average smaller and poorer than those in Germany, modest shields were generally preferred over grandiose sculptures. There were some exceptions, however. The first and most important of the Polish ‘nail figures’ was Cracow’s 5.5-metre-high ‘Column of the Legions’ (Kolumna Legionów), unveiled on 16 August 1915. This bore much in common with Vienna’s nail figure and with those in Germany. It expressed a similar municipal pride and inclusivity: its plinth displayed the arms of Cracow, and those of the important districts of Podgórze and Kleparz and the city’s Jewish quarter Kazimierz. Like its German cousins, the column stood at the heart of the community. It was erected on Cracow’s main marketplace, opposite the famous landmark of St Mary’s Church (the Kościół Mariacki). The city authorities publicly supported the initiative. They did not lead the unveiling ceremony, but the vice-mayor attended along with much of the city council and many officials. At a second major celebration on 29 November, the mayor himself, Dr Juliusz Leo, hammered two nails into the column, one worth 50 crowns as a personal donation and another on the city’s behalf with a value of 1,000 crowns. The educational, professional and social networks and institutions that belonged to the municipality also participated: representatives of Cracow’s university, societies, financial institutions, women’s associations, guilds and veterans of the 1863 uprising, all bearing their standards, were at the Mass that opened the festivities and gave generously. Thousands of private citizens were also present. So many wanted to attend the service before the nailing that St Mary’s became filled to capacity, and crowds were left standing outside in the marketplace.66

  The meaning of Cracow’s nail celebrations in 1915 was, however, radically different to that of the German ceremonies. Rituals in the Reich stressed the unity of local communities behind their nation state’s armed struggle. Galicia’s nail figures, in contrast, embodied the disconnect between local and imperial war efforts in Austria. The Polish Supreme National Committee, the political union that stood behind the Polish Legions, was responsible for erecting Cracow’s column and the smaller shields favoured by other towns in the Crownland. Surmounted by a 90-centimetre-high silver Polish eagle, the ‘Column of the Legions’ was an explicitly national symbol; it proclaimed Cracow’s belonging to a Polish nation, not the Habsburg Empire. The unveiling ceremony successfully reinforced the column’s national message, despite a police ban on speeches. The guest list alone was telling: Polish towns in Galicia, Austrian Silesia and Congress Poland, newly freed from Russian rule, were all invited to send representatives. The date of the unveiling was the first anniversary of the Supreme National Committee’s foundation and the column, and later the shields, were all dedicated to the Polish Legions. The communities that hosted them had far more men serving in the Habsburg Common Army than in the Legions; Cracow itself was a garrison city, home to the Austro-Hungarian I Corps, in which many of its citizens fought.67 Regardless, the money raised from the nailings was, unlike that collected by Vienna’s Wehrmann, intended not for the bereaved relatives of Habsburg soldiers killed in action but to help support the families of fallen Polish Legionnaires. This donation campaign was not anti-dynasty – the majority of functionaries in the Supreme National Committee would have been quite content with a united Poland in a Trialist Empire – but its indifference to the Austro-Hungarian state was striking and ominous. Elected municipal officials who enthusiastically supported the initiative across the Crownland were prioritizing their national identity over imperial allegiances. Clearly, the appeal to a specifically and exclusively Polish solidarity also resonated with much of western Galicia’s population. Newspapers observed with pride that peasants came with their families to participate in the nailings. Smaller communities, although still recovering from invasion, usually raised thousands of crowns through their shields. The column in Cracow attracted the impressive sum of 115,047 crowns, 53 hellers.68

  The ‘war cultures’ that developed in central Europe in the first year of hostilities were a source of great strength to its peoples. All could identify with a creed based on love. The cultures established a hierarchy of sacrifice, at the apex of which stood soldiers, yet they were also highly inclusive, encouraging women and children to collect, save and strive for victory. They valued unity and patriotism. As at mobilization in the summer of 1914, local community leaders played a key role. In lands in which municipal and regional identities were far stronger than any central allegiance, these elites rallied local loyalties and channelled them in the service of wider state war efforts. This worked well in the young German nation state. It was less successful in Austria-Hungary, where the dangers of relying on these often nationalist figures were apparent already in 1915. Nonetheless, there was no alternative. Love within families, broadened to encompass local communities, formed the necessary basis for a wider solidarity and armoured the state and its people for a long war.

  GERMANY VERSUS BRITAIN

  Central European war culture had two faces. While internally it preached love, fear and hatred contorted its face to the outside world. Social scientists interested in propaganda and wartime mobilization have emphasized since the
First World War the importance of cultivating animosity: ‘There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate.’69 Yet in Germany and Austria-Hungary, hatred proved a highly problematical emotion. At first, it may have contributed to promoting wartime solidarity in the face of threat. However, in both states, it ultimately turned inwards to consume the very national or imperial communities that it was supposed to mobilize. This process played out differently in each of the Central Powers. Germans focused their hatred on one enemy. They began the conflict directing their anger at Russia. Most blamed the Tsar for turning the Balkan dispute into a European conflagration and for mobilizing early, and the Russian army’s invasion of East Prussia and its atrocities there had shocked the country at large, summoned powerful feelings of solidarity, unified the people, and cemented the Burgfrieden. However, even as Hindenburg cleared East Prussian territory of Russian invaders for the first time, the attention of the German public had begun to shift towards an even more dangerous adversary. Already by the middle of September, a majority of opinion in the Reich’s newspaper columns had begun to consider ‘England’ as ‘our most brutal opponent’.70

  The German government, though it played a part in promoting this shift, was not solely responsible. Indeed, its ability and ambition to direct and manipulate public discourse were decidedly limited in 1914. The leadership certainly recognized at the outbreak of war the importance of public opinion, but the first priority was on maintaining inner peace, not provoking hatred. Moltke set the tone when he acknowledged as early as 13 August 1914 the essential role played by the ‘united attitude of the parties and the up to now unanimous stance of the press in favour of the war’ in creating ‘the spirit of devotion and unity for Germany’s great mission’. He warned that ‘come what may, this must continue for the whole duration of the war’.71 A press service was established under Major Walter Nicolai, Moltke’s Chief of Intelligence, and daily briefings with Berlin newspaper representatives began immediately, eventually developing into twice- or thrice-weekly press conferences, attended as needed by officials from civilian ministries. The formulation of a coordinated press strategy was hindered by two factors, however. First, at this early stage of the war, the primary concern was not to guide public opinion but merely to prevent the publication of any information that could harm military interests or the Burgfrieden. Already on 31 July 1914, the day on which the State of Siege was announced, the Chancellor issued a list of twenty-six topics, all related to military or naval mobilization and technical matters, banned from mention in print. It was also telling that the army, an institution with limited experience of managing journalists, was given responsibility for censorship. Second, the fragmented nature of Wilhelmine government was a major obstacle to any unified press strategy. The Foreign Office, Naval Ministry and Postal Ministry all pursued separate policies through their own press departments, while the Chancellor, the most important civilian official, possessed no press representative until August 1917. Censorship was divided between the military’s twenty-four regional Deputy Commands. A Supreme Censorship Office tasked with coordination began working in February 1915. However, not until the following October was a dedicated War Press Office, responsible for coordinating censorship, supplying the press with controlled information, and facilitating cooperation between the civilian and military leadership, set up within Nicolai’s department. Moreover, only in February 1918 were the influential posts of Director of the Press Department of the Foreign Office and Press Chief with the Chancellor finally merged into a ‘United Press Department of the Reich Government’.72

  The vehemence and rapidity of the public’s shift of focus to Britain as their main enemy was thus not the work of a skilful state propaganda apparatus, for such machinery did not exist in 1914. Moreover, the shift was surprising for another reason: in peacetime, despite the countries’ commercial rivalry and the antagonism caused by the pre-war naval race, educated Germans had, as a rule, respected and often rather liked the British. There was much that they shared. At the top of the social hierarchy, the monarchs may have hated each other, but they were still family, and many of Germany’s highest government officials, including Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, had children who had studied at Oxford. Britain also provided inspiration to a remarkably wide and diverse range of German society. At one end of the Wilhelmine political spectrum, imperialists envied her navy and colonies, while at the other, Left Liberals admired her parliamentary system and Social Democrats praised the recognition that trade unions were accorded in Britain, unlike in Germany. Culturally, the Germans felt vastly superior in their nation’s musical achievements, and confident too of their own literary heritage. Yet outside the United Kingdom, it was the Reich that was home to Shakespeare’s most adoring fan base. The two nations also shared some recent glorious history; it was, after all, only a century earlier that Marshal Blücher’s Prussians had saved the British at Waterloo, and the powers had together rescued Europe from Napoleon’s French tyranny.73

  The vitriol aimed at Britain was thus at first motivated mostly not by any ingrained hatred, but rather by a deeply felt sense of hurt and betrayal. Particularly among German scholars, important shapers of public opinion in 1914, there was intense disappointment that ‘England’ had, as the internationally respected philosophers Ernst Haeckel and Rudolf Eucken put it, declared itself for a ‘Slavic half-Asiatic power against German culture’, and shock that it had chosen to fight ‘not only on the side of barbarism, but also of moral wrong’.74 Further aggrieved by accusations, especially those made by their peers across the Channel, of German aggression and brutality in Belgium, intellectuals of all political colours mobilized themselves in defence of the Reich. Academics organized appeals denying the charges, including one in the name of ‘the Universities of the German Reich’ and another, the ‘Declaration of the German University Teachers of the German Reich’, which was signed by over three thousand lecturers.75 The most famous, the ‘Appeal to the Civilized World!’ of 4 October, was drawn up at the suggestion of the Reich’s Navy Office, one of the more publicity-savvy government ministries, but was written by two celebrated authors and attracted the support of ninety-three top scholars, artists and writers. Although clumsy and politically naive, it expressed the intellectuals’ strong emotions. Indignantly decrying the charges of barbarism levelled at Germany, the signatories insisted that the real atrocities had been committed in East Prussia, where ‘the earth is drenched with the blood of women and children slaughtered by the Russian hordes’. ‘Believe us!’ exhorted the men of letters. ‘Believe that we shall fight this fight to the bitter end as a civilized people.’76

  German intellectuals were overwhelmingly united in attributing Britain’s enmity to unscrupulous economic self-interest. Germany’s rise on the world market, it was argued, was perceived by the mercantile kingdom as a threat to its own domination of global trade. Britain’s diplomacy over the past decade was interpreted as a return to traditional ‘balance of power’ politics; just as Spain and France had found themselves facing hostile coalitions organized by the British when they strove in past centuries for continental hegemony, so now Germany, as Europe’s strongest and most dynamic land power, was the strangled victim of British-inspired ‘encirclement’.77 The suspicion that British leaders had welcomed the trouble in the Balkans as an opportunity to eliminate their dangerous competitor grew after the release of Anglo-German official correspondence in August, which showed that on the brink of war the Kaiser’s government had been ready to refrain from fighting in the west if Britain stayed out and guaranteed France’s neutrality. Further evidence of British hypocrisy and ill-will against the Reich was found in reports of pre-war Anglo-Russian naval discussions; and, in October, the publication of captured, slightly doctored documents suggesting that Anglo-Belgian talks for action against the Reich in the event of a Franco-German conflict had taken place as early as 1906.78 Some intellectuals saw Britain’s cynicism and duplicity not merely as a matter of recent policy but de
eply rooted in its people’s utilitarian and materialist character. Most notoriously and, even in Germany, controversially, the economist Werner Sombart framed the conflict as a struggle between two peoples with fundamentally opposed ideologies: money-grabbing mercantilist Anglo-Saxon ‘traders’ faced idealistic and altruistic German ‘heroes’ in a ‘war of belief’.79